A Double Thread: Growing Up English and Jewish in London [Hardcover]

John Gross (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 6, 2002

This evocative picture of a lost London and a vanished culture is also the story of a bookish boy discovering his own path. John Gross is the son of a Jewish doctor who practiced in the East End of London from the 1920s to World War II and beyond. His parents were the children of immigrants, steeped in Eastern European customs, yet outside the home he grew up in a very English world of comics and corner shops, sandbags and bomb sites, battered school desks and addictive, dusty cinemas. Mr. Gross looks back on his childhood with humor and insight, tracing this double inheritance. Religion underpins family life: the richness of the Yiddish language, stories, jokes and music-hall humor, the rituals and mysteries of the synagogue, are set against the life of the streets, where boxers and gangsters are heroes and patients turn up on the doorstep at all hours. And in the background, behind the wit and the color, lie the shadows of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust.

Editorial Reviews

From The New Yorker

To be a Jewish child in England in the forties and fifties was to inhabit two vanishing worlds at once. Thus Gross's nostalgia for the Jewish East End—the Yiddish newspapers that his father read but he could not, the synagogue that, on a recent visit, he discovers is a Sikh temple—is interwoven with a nuanced evocation of England in the era of rationing and bomb shelters. As a schoolboy, he was equally obsessed with Jewish history and with stamp collecting, comics, and cricket. Gross, a former editor of the T.L.S., writes with diffident modesty. He experienced no conflict between his Jewish and English heritages, but little cohesion, either; it was like acting "simultaneous roles in two different plays."
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

Review

Wise, witty, and good-tempered. (E. S. Turner Times Literary Supplement )

Beautifully written and deeply moving. (Hilton Kramer )

Intelligent, humane, highly civilized...the voice we hear not only holds our attention but also wins our affection and respect. (Los Angeles Times )

A very beautiful and valuable book. (Oliver Sacks )

Incisive.... Mr. Gross's voice—demure, measured, if at times overly cautious—is strikingly unique and unusually trustworthy. (Wall Street Journal )

Remarkably readable and entertaining. (Antonia Fraser )

Extraordinary riches are crammed into this short book. (Susan Hill )

Captivating and finely instructive. Written with grace and lucidity. (Robert Alter )

Subtle and deeply satisfying to read. (Michael Holroyd )

A wonderfully evocative account of growing up in London's Jewish East End. (Bell, Daniel )

A delightful memoir of life to the age of 18 in London before, during, and after World War II. (New York Times Book Review, 2002 Notable Book )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Ivan R Dee (March 6, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1566634245
• ISBN-13: 978-1566634243
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,145,929 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Reflections on a Unique Youth, April 12, 2002

By 

Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Double Thread: Growing Up English and Jewish in London (Hardcover)

In at least one sense, the title is misleading: What Gross has accomplished in this volume is to weave an enormous, vividly colorful, and immensely intricate tapestry with almost infinite "threads" or themes. They include "the story of [his] two separate entwined legacies of being English and being Jewish" during 1935-52 as well as the Battle of Britain when he and his mother were relocated from London to Sussex to avoid the Blitz, the gradual awareness of the Holocaust, and eventually the establishment of the State of Israel.

For me, one of Gross's most powerful qualities is his modesty (almost self-deprecation) as his memoir proceeds through such volatile times. For example, on the matter of anti-Semitism, he observes that "to have had a religious upbringing at least assures that in your own mind you are a Jew first, and the object of other people's dislike second." Young Gross seems to have been spared the ordeal of what other Jews his age experienced during the Third Reich. With regard to his own faith, "for many Jews, whatever the larger historical balance sheet, anti-Semitism is the heart of the matter, the only significant reason why they still feel Jewish." I was also deeply moved by his portrayal of his father, Avraham ben Oser, who became a doctor. The adult Gross very closely resembles that wise and generous man. It is not so much that father and son tolerate anti-Semitism; rather, that they absorb it and thereby deprive it of any legitimacy.

Frequently as I read this book, I wondered what their conversations would have discussed had young Andras Grof emigrated to London rather than to New York and become friends with young Gross. (Grof changed his name to Grove and later served as CEO of Intel Corporation. I highly recommend his own memoir, Swimming Across.) The balance of Gross's engaging and eloquent autobiography reveals his thoughts and feelings about the Cold War years during which Stalin executed so many Jewish artists and writers. He also comments insightfully on T.S. Eliot ("who may be a great poet but he isn't greater than the Jewish people") and W.H. Auden whose social values are more compatible with Gross's own. There is great sensitivity in this book but almost no sentimentalism. Were a higher rating available, I would gratefully give it to this unique and compelling personal narrative.

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Double Thread, January 16, 2003

By 

Judith C. Kinney (Westerville, OH USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Double Thread: Growing Up English and Jewish in London (Hardcover)

I really enjoyed this book, especially the last chapter, in which Gross tells about his reading. Like Gross, I love books about books. Like Gross, I read a lot of comic books in my youth (mainly Wonder Woman) and, later, mysteries (all of Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie and many more). Like Gross, I thought there would always be time later to read the classics, and also like him, I tend to pick up whatever catches my eye at the library. Now I'm 63, and although I've read much of the great stuff, there's still much to be read. My tastes don't run to T. S. Eliot and Gross's moderns but backward to the nineteenth-century English novelists and beyond.

Gross has a pleasant, low-key style and, it seemed to me, a realistic take on childhood and its memories.